Many fields of research and many professional disciplines rely upon original writing that is heavily supported by citation or reference to prior writings. Such citations are often essential in order to provide credibility to the points raised in the original writing. The weight or importance of the cited references may dictate how well the reader will accept the premise being posited in the original writing. In other instances, references to other data sources are provided to the reader to assist the reader in further investigating the point raised or the topic discussed. Whether provided as footnotes, endnotes, or embedded within the text of the original writing document, citations form a critical part of professional writing across numerous fields such as, for instance, legal, medical, engineering, science, and even various business disciplines. In fact, the practice is commonplace in any discipline where a body of written knowledge has been created and is publicly available such that it may be referenced.
As a reader of original writing in such professional disciplines, it is quite often necessary to investigate the cited references. For example, someone conducting research may require more information about a topic than is provided in the original writing, and may want to review some of the cited materials to gain a more full understanding. In other cases, the reader may want to verify the accuracy of the citation, or to determine if the citation actually supports the premise in the original writing for which it is being used. Traditionally, the public availability of reference materials was through a physical library. If a source was cited in a document and a reader wanted to evaluate that source, the reader would need to obtain a physical copy of the source, such as from a research library. As the Internet has evolved, the text of many cited references may be accessed over a computer network. In some cases, the references may be found posted on publicly available websites. In other cases, they may be obtained through paid subscription services from privately managed reference consolidation databases, such as those maintained by LEXIS and WESTLAW.
Though Internet searching and reference consolidation databases have made it much easier to obtain and review cited references, it can still be a formidable and expensive task. First, at a minimum, a robust Internet connection is required to locate the references. Such connections are now almost universal in the workplace through desktop computers, but mobile connectivity through wireless devices may be unavailable at times or cost prohibitive. For example, if an Internet connection is available at all during airline flight, it is through an expensive and inefficient airlink service. Even on the ground, many remote areas have little or no wireless connectivity. Still other areas, such as certain public buildings, may employ devices to purposefully block wireless Internet connections. Furthermore, because most research is done via desktop, the websites available to access reference consolidation databases are poorly adapted for interface with handheld devices having smaller screen displays. Navigating and executing complex searches with a mobile device on the standard content websites can be difficult or impossible as those websites are set up. Where mobile-specific websites are available, functionality and content is severely limited.
Even where desktops are available or connectivity is not a concern, the process of obtaining the cited references for review is cumbersome and inefficient. First, the reader must identify the citations within the original writing and must manually type or paste them into a search field. With luck, the reference may be found in its entirety on the public Internet. More likely, however, the searcher will only waste valuable time concluding that this is not the case. The searcher must then log into a fee-based reference consolidation database such as LEXIS or WESTLAW and conduct a search for the reference. Though the reference may be available through such services, there is further cost and time involved in locating it. This expense of time and money must then be multiplied by the number of citations within the document that the reader chooses to pursue or evaluate. In addition, once a reader has resorted to a paid subscription service, there is no way to know what related resources may also be available for free on the Internet. For example, a search on a fee-based reference consolidation database for a cited reference that is unavailable on the public Internet may lead the searcher to other related references offered through the fee-based database that are publicly available on the Internet. Furthermore, searches conducted through services such as LEXIS and WESTLAW are limited to the material within the libraries they manage and update. They do not dynamically search the larger internet to pull in relevant content, such as, for instance, from Internet blog websites.